The document discusses changes that have occurred to families in recent decades, including increases in divorce rates, cohabitation, and births outside of marriage. This has contributed to greater family diversity with more lone-parent families, stepfamilies, and people living alone or without children. Reasons proposed for these changes include developments like the legalization and destigmatization of divorce, women's rising economic independence, and declining religious influence in society.

2.  Know the main changes in partnerships including
marriage, divorce, cohabitation and civil partnerships
as well as one-person and extended family
households
 Know the main changes in childbearing and
childrearing, including births outside of marriage, lone-
parent families and stepfamilies
 Understand how these changes have contributed to
greater family diversity
 Be able to analyse and evaluate the reasons for these
changes in families and households

4.  Marriage
 Separation
 Divorce
 Empty shell marriage
 Irretrievable breakdown
 Monogamy
 Serial monogamy
 Social stigma
 Re-marriage
 Cohabitation
 Trial marriage
 Single-hood
 Divorce rate
 Marriage rate
 secularisation

6.  What changes do you think have occurred to the
family in recent times, if any?

7.  In the past 30 or 40 years there have been some major
changes in family and household patterns:
◦ Number of nuclear family households has fallen
◦ Divorce rates have increased
◦ Fewer first marriages, more re-marriages and people are marrying
later in life
◦ More couples cohabiting
◦ Same-sex relationships legally recognised
◦ Women having fewer children/having them later
◦ More births outside of marriage
◦ More lone-parent families
◦ More people live alone
◦ More stepfamilies
◦ More couples without children

8.  How is the concept of child-centredness
reinforced or otherwise in this programme?
 What other factors must be taken into account
when looking at the consequences of divorce?
E.g. economic factors
 What percentage of fathers lose contact with their
children within three years of divorcing?
 What impact has divorce had on the children in
the video?
 How to Divorce without Screwing Up your Children.WM

9.  Major factor
 Most re-marriages involve a divorcee
 Divorce creates both lone-parent families and
one-person households

12.  Since 1960s  increase in the number of divorces
 Doubled between 1961 and 1969, doubled again
1972
 Peaked in 1993 at 180,000
 Since then numbers have fallen – 2001 
157,000 (6x times higher than in 1961)
 At this rate 40% of all marriages will end in divorce

13.  7/10 petitions for divorce come from:
◦ females
 1946  37% came from:
◦ women
 Most common reason is ‘unreasonable behaviour’
of the:
◦ husband
 However, more recently divorce rates have started
declining:
 Divorce Rate Lowest for 29 Years

14.  Those that marry young
 Have a child before they marry
 Cohabit before marriage
 Those where one or both partners were married
before

15.  Sociologists have stated the following reasons:
◦ Changes in the law
◦ Declining stigma and changing attitudes
◦ Secularisation
◦ Rising expectations of marriage
◦ Changes in the position of women

16.  19th
C Britain  divorce difficult (especially for
women)
 Now:
◦ Equalising the legal reasons for divorce between the
sexes (1923)
◦ Widening the grounds for divorce
◦ Making divorce cheaper
◦ Tiger Woods Case

17.  1923  sharp increase in the number of divorce
petitions from women
 1949  legal aid for divorce cases lowered the
cost
 Divorce rates have risen with every change in the
law

18.  Desertion
◦ One partner leaves the other but the couple remains
legally married
 Legal Separation
◦ Court separates the financial and legal affairs
◦ Stay married, not free to remarry
 Empty Shell Marriage
◦ Married in name only and live under the same roof
◦ As divorce has become more easily accessible this has
become less popular

19.  Stigma  negative label
 Mitchell and Goody (1997)
◦ An important change since the 1960s is the declining
stigma attached to divorce
 ‘normalises’ divorce
 Misfortune rather than shameful

20.  Decline in the influence of religion in society
 Church attendance rates continue to decline
 Traditional opposition of divorce by the church has less
weight
 2001 Census data
◦ 43% of young people with no religion were cohabiting
◦ 34% of Christians
◦ 17% of Muslims
◦ 10% of Sikhs

21.  Functionalist Ronald Fletcher
(1966)
◦ Higher expectations placed on marriage
◦ Less willing to tolerate an unhappy
marriage
 Ideology of romance (Mr and Mrs
Right)  if love dies there is no
point in marriage
 In the past families were
constructed mainly for economic
reasons or of duty to one’s family

22.  Allan and Crow (2001)
◦ ‘Love, personal commitment and intrinsic satisfaction are now
seen as the cornerstones of marriage. The absence of these
feelings is itself justification for ending the relationship.’
 Functionalists take an optimistic view
◦ Point to the continuing popularity of marriage
◦ It has not been rejected as an institution
◦ Too ‘rosy’ a view?
 Feminists
◦ The oppression of women in marriage is the main factor
◦ Functionalists fail to explain why it is mainly women rather
than men that seek divorce.

23.  Improvements in economic
position
◦ Women today much more likely to
be in paid work
 47% in 1959
 70% in 2005
◦ Equal pay act & anti-discrimination
law
◦ Girls’ greater success in education
◦ Availability of welfare benefits –
women no longer have to be
financially dependent on men

24.  Arlie Hochschild (1997)
argues that for many women, the
home compares unfavourably with
work
◦ At work the woman feels valued
◦ Men’s resistance to housework at
home makes marriage less stable
◦ Both going to work leaves less time
and energy to talk about issues
together

25.  Wendy Sigle-Rushton (2007)
◦ Working mothers more likely to divorce than traditional bread winning
families
◦ However, where the husband is involved with chores, the likelyhood of
divorce falls to the same levels as traditional bread winning families
 Jessie Bernard (1976)
◦ Many women feel a growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal marriage
◦ Rising divorce rate + most petitions coming from women = feminist
ideas – more confident about rejecting patriarchal oppression

26.  Make notes from the yellow book (Haralambos)
page 64.
◦ The consequences of divorce
 Divorce and children
 Divorce and society

27.  Which religions now allow divorce and re-
marriage and under which circumstances?
 Try to find out about a range of churches
◦ Church of England
◦ Catholic
◦ Baptist
◦ Jehovas Witnesses
◦ Pentecostalism
◦ Non-Christian religions
 Create a poster in publisher that can
then be saved and put on the VLE